> In any situation the markets will do the best to optimize but will always fall short of perfection

The problem with markets is a "market efficient" outcome can be catastrophic for social welfare.

During the Irish potato famine the markets allocated food away from Ireland because there were not many there who could afford it. They starved. The market functioned perfectly.

Markets find equilibriums. Total collapse is an equilibrium. Starvation can happen at equilibrium.

You can have 100_000 homeless people at market equalibrium

I'm actually saying the reverse and agreeing with you that there are market efficient outcomes that should have been considered or done . In the Irish Potato famine around 1-2 million people left the country. Instead of preserving the workforce they opted for a short term market equilibrium of selling the food to people that could pay and not performing some kind of tax that would feed the needy. The previous Tory government tried to do some charity but then the incoming government did a more of a hands off approach which is an incorrect response. So yes the Irish Potato famine was the result of a market efficient equilibrium that shouldn't have been allowed to occur.

Indeed. The "Free Market" can elevate a ruthless plutocracy of robber barons with private armies far longer than the little people can stay alive.

As the Bezos Battalion, the Zuckerberg Zealots and the Musk Machines close in around your hometown's lithium supply, you can of course die with pride knowing that you believed in the Constitution and lived as the Founders intended.

(plz no ban, I love Free Markets, I'm just working on my creative writing)